TRANSIT STRIKE: THE ISSUES; Tough Stance, Tougher Fines

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: December 22, 2005

When Roger Toussaint, the president of the transit workers' local, defiantly announced a strike, he proclaimed that his union was taking a proud stand against the concessions that employers had demanded nationwide.

But Mr. Toussaint has quickly discovered that engaging in an illegal walkout can leave a union with a weak hand. His union faces a $1 million fine for each day on strike, a state judge is threatening to throw him in jail and thousands of individual strikers stand to lose two days' pay for each day out.

Not only that, but the mayor, the governor and editorial writers are denouncing the union as greedy and showing contempt for the law. The front page of The New York Post screamed, ''You Rats.'' And the transit workers' parent union has come out in opposition to the strike.

''They have painted themselves into a corner,'' said Barry L. Feinstein, the former president of New York City's largest Teamsters local and now a member of the transportation authority's board.

Looking for a way out of this corner, Mr. Toussaint yesterday seized on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's characterization of the strikers as ''thuggish'' and ''greedy,'' saying it was insulting language to describe workers whom millions of New Yorkers rely on each day to ferry them to work. A dozen union leaders, including the heads of the teachers and the firefighters, backed his effort to resist the transportation authority's demand for pension concessions. But they stopped short of giving enthusiastic support to the illegal walkout.

In an impassioned news conference, Mr. Toussaint invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks as he sought to rally his troops, and New Yorkers, in effect portraying the strike as a civil rights campaign to help a work force that is largely black and Hispanic.

Mr. Toussaint also sought to throw Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki on the defensive by asserting that the dispute was essentially a showdown between hard-working New Yorkers struggling to make ends meet and a moneyed establishment. At the head of that establishment, Mr. Toussaint said repeatedly, is a billionaire mayor, out of touch with working-class New Yorkers.

''The language that is being used is undignified and an unbecoming description of public servants,'' said Mr. Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union. ''To New Yorkers: your next door neighbor is a transit worker -- a bus driver, a cleaner, a station agent.''

He continued: ''We appeal to you. Unlike the person using this kind of language, we are the ones who know the lives of hard-working people, and not the mayor.''

If Mr. Toussaint's words were powerful, it was not at all clear whether they would be potent in helping his union out of a tight spot. To do that, he must protect his union's honor and win his workers a better deal than the one he rejected just before the strike deadline.

With the fine against the union growing by $1 million each day, Mr. Toussaint may well hope to shoot the moon, reasoning that the financial penalties might grow so large, and bankruptcy so certain, that his union might just as well stay out for 30 days as for 3.

Or, as John H. Mollenkopf, the director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University Graduate Center, put it, ''The union recognizes that there is no difference between unbearable fines and doubly unbearable ones.''

Mr. Toussaint, the truculent bargainer, has drawn so many lines in the sand -- refusing binding arbitration, or any contract that treats new workers worse, or any wage offer that does not exceed inflation -- that it is hard to imagine that he might not eventually have to accept a deal that will make him eat some humble pie. But the history of labor relations is peopled with negotiators who steadfastly assert that they will never accept this or that and then a week or two later accept it, saying that they were cleverly posturing.

Robert W. Snyder, author of ''Transit Talk,'' an oral history of subway and bus workers, said Mr. Toussaint had created problems for his union by striking when he did. He said Mr. Toussaint had not acted as wisely as his famed predecessor, Michael J. Quill, who led the union's 12-day strike in 1966.

''For decades Quill spoke with great militance, yet he only walked out once,'' Mr. Snyder said. ''Quill grew up in the Irish Republican Army and he knew something about guerrilla warfare -- the first rule is you don't fight when the advantage lies with your adversary.''

He said Mr. Quill was smart for striking when John V. Lindsay was weak -- it was his first day as mayor. In contrast, Mr. Toussaint has gone on strike when the tide seems against him. Mayor Bloomberg was just resoundingly re-elected and Governor Pataki is thinking of running for president.

''Pataki knows that if he is friendly to the unions it won't play well in the South Carolina primary,'' Mr. Snyder said. ''And Mayor Bloomberg has no appreciation of labor unions. He is very business-minded.''

Today the city will be in court seeking additional fines against individual strikers, while Justice Theodore T. Jones of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn might order the jailing of Mr. Toussaint -- a move that some city officials fear could turn him into a martyr but might not move the strike closer to settlement.

By no means is everything lost for Mr. Toussaint and the union, Mr. Feinstein said.

''There are any number of honorable exits for him, but the first thing he has to do is get back to the bargaining table,'' Mr. Feinstein said.

Many labor experts say the best opportunity to reach a settlement is over the next few days. If the work stoppage drags on for more than a week, union leaders, already facing union bankruptcy, may feel they have little more to lose, and union members, facing large fines, may believe that the longer they stay out the more likely they will somehow win amnesty, reducing the fines.

Photo: As other strikers stayed closer to the Mother Clara Hale bus depot on Lenox Avenue in Manhattan to avoid the wind, Junior Page, a maintenance worker, warmed himself yesterday. (Photo by Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)(pg. B8)